No Sunshine for Women: Industry Payment Disparities in Vascular Surgery

Abstract

Industry relationships provide opportunities for professional growth and technical innovation. This study characterized the gender disparities in financial relationships between industry and vascular surgeons. A retrospective study was performed using the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid open payments database. Data were extracted for all payments made to vascular surgeons from 2014 to 2020, with gender determined for all vascular surgeons receiving payments. The physician profile or publicly available website was used to determine gender. The payment form and amount were collected. The average payment per category, by gender, was calculated. A total of 438,367 payments were made to 5380 vascular surgeons (87% men and 13% women) from 2014 to 2020. The average payment for a male surgeon was significantly greater than that for a female surgeon ($247 ± $3693 vs $150 ± $817; P < .001). When examining the payment categories, the female surgeons received 13% of industry payments in education and 26% of industry grant payments. However, they received 0% of licensing or royalty payments, 0% of ownership, and only 3% of honoraria payments. Among the largest 15 companies, which represented >70% of payments to surgeons, men earned, on average, 2.5 times more per payment than women, with a range of 30% to 1000% more per person (Fig 1). During the study period, the average male vascular surgeon received approximately nearly three times more in industry payments than did the average female surgeon ($21,720 vs $8276). The average annual amount paid to surgeons by industry per year had decreased by 30%, from $4703 to $3279. Despite this overall decline, the relationship between payments to male and female surgeons remained constant at 2.6 to 2.8 times throughout the study period (Fig 2). Analysis of the open payments database revealed that female vascular surgeons earned less than one half as much as men from industry, with little improvement in the payment disparities over time.Fig 2View Large Image Figure ViewerDownload Hi-res image Download (PPT)